I’ve been using streaming service Streamyard for the past year for doing my weekly LinkedIn Live conversations. And when they recently were acquired by virtual events platform Hopin, I started to think about what this combo could potentially mean for future of two technologies that have blown up since the beginning of the pandemic. Which is why I wanted to do a conversation with Keith Teare, a Silicon Valley based investor, advisor and mentor to a number of companies participating in these industries – including Millicast and Around.co. Keith is also a founding investor in TechCrunch. Lastly, Keith and I are members of the Gillmor Gang show that can be seen weekly on TechCrunch.

And during our conversation about the future of livestreaming and virtual events, something Keith said about using newsletters, podcasts, Clubhouse and other channels led to the topic of attention. And how all these disparate technologies and channels will eventually come together to create, for lack of a better way to put it, attention platforms that allow us to focus more on providing access to what we have to offer customers, instead of the individual content outputs that may briefly capture their attention. And the bigger question of how can we create business models that work for us based on how that attention can be converted into value exchanges we can generate revenue from.